


Siege

by holograms



Series: whiskey tango foxtrot [2]
Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Character Development, Complicated Relationships, Explicit Sexual Content, Infidelity, Loneliness, Multi, Pining, Rivals to Lovers (but not quite friends), War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:20:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24572932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holograms/pseuds/holograms
Summary: For as difficult as his relationship with Pierce is, it’s quite easy.[basically, seasons 4 and 5 but with more]
Relationships: Frank Burns/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, Frank Burns/Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan
Series: whiskey tango foxtrot [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1764913
Comments: 10
Kudos: 34





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> a continuation of previous fic, [ambush](%E2%80%9C); it’s not necessary to read beforehand I guess (altho it would be spiffy if you did?). what you’d need to know from that is Hawkeye/Frank develop an enemies with benefits type arrangement.

Frank is in command of the 4077th, but he wishes it were under different circumstances.

It was supposed to be his _moment,_ taking over when the CO was sent home, but now he’s just a replacement for a dead man.

Across the O.R., Pierce is openly crying. He always feels every emotion so much. Joy. Anger. Grief.

Margaret leaves Frank’s side and goes to Pierce. She wipes away his tears and lowers his mask to clean his runny nose while he keeps his hands in some man’s chest cavity.

Frank tries to cry, but he cannot.

His first official act of administration is to write a letter to Henry Blake’s widow. Well — O’Reilly writes it and he signs it. Frank admits it’s better than anything he would have written himself.

O’Reilly sniffles. His eyes are red-rimmed and he’s trying to hide the fact that he’s crying. He hasn’t stopped crying since he told them the news. The Corporal had been close with the Colonel, but Frank is the CO now and he needs to understand that. It’s not _fair_ to be compared to who came before.

He supposes he should make an effort for his company clerk to like him (even though he should respect him on principle). Frank reaches out and pats O’Reilly’s arm, says, “I’m sorry, Radar.”

At least it stops O’Reilly’s crying. He startles, looks at Frank like he doesn’t know who he is.

“Sir?”

Frank retracts his hand. “Why are you standing here? Carry on!”

He doesn’t need people to like him, anyway.

Grief hangs heavily over the MASH.

Pierce and McIntyre arrange a memorial service for Blake in the officer’s and enlisted club. Frank attends because he actually _does_ care, no matter what’s whispered behind his back.

He sits at a table with Margaret. She’s drinking her sorrows away, too. She’s been reticent since they found out. He didn’t expect it would affect her this much, but she does have the soft heart of a woman underneath her Army fatigues.

But it’s Pierce who he worries most about. He isn’t handling it well. Frank thinks Pierce doesn’t handle loss well in any capacity; if he can’t accept the deaths of patients he doesn’t even know, how could he handle the death of a friend? Frank wants to talk to him, find an empty room and kiss him, but Pierce is too busy acting like a fool.

“What’s needed is _order_ ,” says Frank. “Something to distract them from their sadness. Any time I was upset as a kid, my mother had me do extra chores. It gave me something else to be miserable about.”

Margaret looks at him. Her cold gaze feels reprimanding.

“You should at least wait a day, Frank,” she says. “I’m excited about your command as much as you are, but you don’t want to be abrasive.” She pauses. “More than you already are.”

He watches Pierce lie on the bar and let nurses lick scotch off his stomach.

“Fine,” says Frank, and then he orders himself something with alcohol in it.

Margaret joins Frank in his new private quarters that first night. He makes love to her, possibly cries when they join together, clings to her and tells her, “If you die, I’m going with you.”

She scoffs. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

His love for her is not ridiculous. “I’m serious, Margaret. I can’t live without you.”

He doesn’t ask if she could live without him. He doesn’t think he would like the answer.

When Pierce doesn’t come to him the next day, Frank summons him to his office. He’s clearly hung over, eyes bloodshot and hair tangled. He’s not in a state to address his commanding officer — wearing his robe hanging open with only a shirt and shorts underneath, and his boots loose, untied. If Pierce thinks Frank will give him slack because they have an _arrangement_ , he’s wrong.

Frank slams a book on the desk. Pierce winces, holds his head.

“Stop with the cruel and unusual punishment.” Pierce dumps himself in the chair, his leg hanging over the armrest. The man can never sit properly.

Frank isn’t sure what to say. Nothing he could say would make it better. He thinks Pierce doesn’t want to feel better — he wants to wallow in misery. Frank understands Pierce is upset and has lost a friend, but he told him. People die.

“I have something for you,” says Frank.

“Don’t you think it’s a bit soon for me to wear your class ring?”

Frank second guesses being kind to him, but he’s already gone to the trouble, so.

He slides the paper across the desk toward Pierce, who takes it and scans it, then looks up at him incredulously.

“You’re giving me leave for Tokyo?”

“A whole week, starting tomorrow,” Frank says. “It was the most I could swing on short notice.”

“Why?”

Pierce doesn’t need to be so suspicious that he would do something altruistic for him.

“Just take the R&R, Pierce.” _I’m worried about you,_ Frank doesn’t say.

Pierce stands, motions with a jerk of his head for Frank to follow. He pulls Frank into a corner of the office where there’s no direct line of view from a window, and then lays a kiss on him. His mouth tastes awful — he hadn’t brushed his teeth yet — but it’s nice. It feels grateful, something that Pierce can’t say aloud.

“I wish I could go with you,” Frank says, quietly. “But I have my duties here—”

“No,” Pierce says, cutting him off. He shakes his head. “I want to be alone.”

He doesn’t want him around. What did Margaret call him? _Abrasive._

“Well.” Frank puts his hands together. “We’ll be here when you get back. Unless the war ends.”

That earns him the ghost of a smile.

“Thanks, Frank,” Pierce says. He taps the paper against Frank’s rear. As he exits the office he looks over his shoulder, says, “Don’t let the place burn down while I’m gone.”

He has command of the unit, and now McIntyre is leaving.

Things are looking up for Frank Burns.

Frank is glad McIntyre got his orders while Pierce is away, or else there would be more chaos than what he manages to create on his own. The first evening, McIntyre goes naked through the mess tent (and Margaret stares just a moment _too_ long), and then he pulls a fast one, tricking Frank to stick his hand into a jar of mayo.

That is why Frank won’t miss the man. He’s long thought McIntyre is the most troublesome of the pair. With him gone, maybe Pierce will side with him more often. Pierce won’t have his precious _friend_ , so he’ll have no choice but to spend more time with Frank, and then they won’t have to sneak around as much.

They try to get ahold of Pierce to let him know McIntyre is leaving, but he’s a man who knows how to disappear. O’Reilly calls the hotel in Tokyo but the receptionist tells him that _Captain Pierce_ isn’t accepting messages, and in fact, if someone from the Army is asking for him, he actually isn’t there at all. There is no way of contacting him in short of going there in person.

Which is what McIntyre pleads for.

“Please! I’ll go there and find him and come right back. Let it be the last thing you do for me and I promise you’ll never see me again.”

“Absolutely not,” Frank says, and McIntyre swears at him but he stands his ground. “I can’t! If you were to take off, I would be the only surgeon here. What if we had wounded?”

He could try harder. Have MPs find Pierce and drag his insubordinate tush all the way back. But. He doesn’t want to.

McIntyre kicks over a chair. “The Army fucks me over one last time.”

The morning McIntyre is set to leave, Frank thinks of telling him everything, in nasty detail. _Hawkeye and I have had a tryst for months and he likes it, he loves sucking my dick, I’ve fucked his sweet ass, he tells me things, you missed out—_

But he doesn’t, and McIntyre leaves. Good riddance.

Pierce is overdue. Frank has to distract himself to keep from looking out the window, waiting for him, like he’s a woman waiting for his man to come home from a war. Except there’s a war on, so... It’s not like Frank misses him. He’ll get in a lot of trouble if his chief of surgery has gone AWOL, or drank himself into a stupor and accidentally wandered out into a minefield.

The distraction he needs comes in the form of Margaret bringing the personnel file for McIntyre’s replacement.

“He’s fresh out of residency,” she says. “We’ll train him our way, Frank.”

Yes. This new surgeon — Hunnicutt — will be trained to respect authority. He’ll be the outsider. Frank is in charge and he has Margaret as his second-in-command and Pierce as his...sidekick. Maybe together they can pull some pranks on the new guy! That would be fun.

Margaret tells him _he’s going to do great_ and she runs her hands up his back and yes. This must be what power feels like.

Although, it vanishes when Pierce comes rolling in at roll call in the back of a rickshaw.

“Honey, I’m home!” Pierce shoves a package into Frank’s hands. “For you, Frank. A MacArthur doll.”

Cue laughter.

It isn’t even that funny. Pierce grins, pleased with himself. While he was gone, he probably sat in a bar thinking of new ways to insult Frank. And Frank had been _worried_ about him, how _dare_ he—

“He’s defying your authority,” Margaret hisses in his ear. “The whole company’s laughing at you.”

He knows that, she doesn’t have to tell him. He’s been laughed at enough to know.

He dismisses the company, and Pierce leaves before he can stop him.

Not ten minutes later Pierce storms into his office, his clothes soaking wet — Frank can only imagine why — with O’Reilly scurrying in behind him.

He must have found out Trapper John has left him.

“You have to let me try to meet him before he leaves,” Pierce says. “Please.”

“No,” Frank says, for no real reason other than to deny him. But he has to avert his eyes, because it’s hard to say _no_ when he makes that face.

Next to him, Margaret beams.

He gives O’Reilly orders to pick up Captain Hunnicutt and that Pierce cannot go and that’s _final._ Pierce looks like he wants to object further, but he does not. He stomps off and Frank doesn’t see him for the rest of the afternoon.

Frank thinks of having Pierce arrested for going AWOL. Or better yet: tying him naked to his bed and giving him a good spanking.

But Pierce comes back with BJ Hunnicutt, and the first thing that Hunnicutt does is call Frank _ferret face,_ and Pierce thinks it’s the most hilarious thing in the world.

Hunnicutt reminds Frank of a golden retriever. Over eager, a bit dim, liable to wreck furniture. Frank decides that he dislikes him on principle. It has nothing to do with the fact that he makes Pierce grin like a maniac even though they’ve just met.

Frank is so mad that he doesn’t want to see Pierce at all, but when he comes to Frank’s tent without knocking at an ungodly hour he doesn’t tell him to leave. Frank knows it’s Pierce — he never knocks — and he turns on the lamp to see him skulking at the door. Pierce slides the lock shut and pulls down the shade and Frank knows what he’s aiming for. It’s still him who he comes to for his _needs_.

Frank could wrestle him down and discipline him but those eyes are so angry, so sad—

Pierce takes it out on him. Pierce is vicious with his mouth, kissing him hard, without mercy. He tugs Frank’s shirt over his head and scrapes his teeth against his jaw and pinches his nipples and shoves his hand into his underwear, gripping him hard, laughing when Frank gasps in pain.

Pierce says, “I hate you,” when Frank pushes into him but then his head falls back against the pillow and grunts when he thrusts in fully. His neck is displayed, like an animal offering itself up to a predator. Frank tastes him there, licks where he needs to shave. Pierce squirms underneath him, wraps one of his long spindly legs around him. Frank threads his fingers through Pierce’s hair, pushing it off his forehead. There’s pain creased there, or maybe self-loathing.

“Are you alright?” Frank asks. “Pierce?”

“I don’t want your concern, I want you to fuck me harder.” Pierce’s breathing hitches, he digs his nails into Frank’s back. “Is that all you’ve got, Burns?”

After, Pierce is limping when he goes back to his own tent.

A few days later, Frank’s command is stolen from him. The whole ordeal goes spectacularly bad. The new CO seems to like him less than Blake did, and of course he favors the hooligans Pierce and Hunnicutt because they’re _excellent_ doctors. Even Margaret finds the new Colonel admirable ( _he’s real Army, maybe we’ll finally have some real leadership,_ she says, disregarding that Frank had just been commander).

And so, he moves back into the _Swamp_. It feels awkward and like he doesn’t belong, not he ever felt very welcome in the first place. Pierce has accepted Hunnicutt as one of _his_ and now it’s _their_ place and Frank is intruding even though he was there first. Pierce has been distant since he came back from Tokyo — really, since Blake’s plane fell into the sea.

Frank sets up his corner while Pierce hovers around him and pokes through his box of personal belongings. “Got a lash curler I can borrow?”

Frank snatches his compass from Pierce’s grubby fingers. “Oh, go snoot in your flute.”

Across the room, Hunnicutt snorts into his gin. “I can’t get enough of your witticisms.”

Frank can’t figure out if he’s joking or not.

Pierce pats him on the back. “Missed you in here, Frank.”

He doesn’t know if he’s telling the truth, either.

Things go back to normal — as they can be.

Frank is having a nice supper with Margaret in the mess tent, but then Pierce joins them along with Hunnicutt and O’Reilly. He doesn’t like conversing with the enlisted to begin with, but the Corporal gives him the heebie-jeebies because sometimes it seems like he knows too much, and he still isn’t fond of Hunnicutt, and Pierce had been especially irritating that morning and he doesn’t want to talk to him, either.

And yet, Frank cannot escape him.

Pierce scowls at his soup, stirring it. “Are we sure this is edible?”

“Always complaining,” Margaret says, even though she’s hardly touched her own meal.

The food is awful, but Frank would never openly complain. They aren’t there for luxuries; they are there to serve their country. Whereas Pierce is an entitled brat, and thinks things should be better just because he says so.

Pierce sets his spoon down and groans. “I’m going to starve.”

“I doubt that,” says Frank. Pierce gets the majority of his caloric intake from liquor and junk food bought from the PX, or treats sent from home.

Pierce sticks his forefinger into his soup and holds it in front of Hunnicutt. “Taste this and tell me if it’s any good.”

Hunnicutt pushes his hand away. “I doubt your finger improves the taste.”

“Really! C’mon BJ, try it—”

“I’ll bite your finger _off_.”

Pierce feigns shock and pulls his hand away, but then shoves it across the table, putting it in Frank’s face instead.

“How about you?” he asks. “You should like it, since you’re used to sucking.”

Frank stops breathing. Mystery-flavor soup drips off Pierce’s finger onto his plate.

Margaret gasps. “How can you let that nasty vermin speak to you like that?”

“To respond only gives him the attention he seeks,” Frank says. Not because the double entendre makes him think about crawling under the table and sucking Pierce dry.

“Men!” Margaret shouts, and then leaves in a huff.

Pierce smiles, victorious. He wipes his finger on his jacket and eats his bread, tearing it apart with his teeth.

“Major Houlihan is a bit tense,” Pierce says. “You need to take care of her _needs_ better. Harder.”

Frank glares at him. He thinks of shoving Pierce’s face into his soup.

O’Reilly leans in to Hunnicutt, murmurs, “He’s talking about sex, right?”

Pierce raises his brow at Frank, a silent asking of: _do you wanna...?_

He leaves Pierce and goes to Margaret instead. He grovels, _I’m sorry, darling,_ even though he isn’t sure what he’s sorry for but she lets him put his hand in her pants and get her off, and she’s a lot less grumpy after that, and reciprocates.

A cold front blew in with a storm, and then overnight the weather goes from blazing hot to cool, and every day after it gets colder and colder. Frank knows that the temperature is about the same as a winter back home in Indiana, but it feels worse, somehow. It probably has to do with the fact that they have to sleep in tents with minimal heating. He digs out all his winter gear from his trunk, puts on his cap and wraps his scarf around his neck and wears his gloves, but it still isn’t enough — it’s the kind of cold that seeps into your bones.

He and Pierce go for a walk outside during a break, trying to keep warm — the heating is broken in post-OP, again. It had snowed earlier in the evening and it covered everything in a thin layer of frost. But at least outside, they can huddle together in favor of body heat. And Pierce is very warm.

Frank sneaks a glance at him. The moon is low and casts shadows on his face, making his features more pronounced. Pierce isn’t what Frank would call _handsome_ but he’s…nice to look at.

Pierce’s nose is pink. He is very kissable.

“So,” Frank says, “do you and Hunnicutt have a _thing_?”

“What?” Pierce asks, quick, too defensive. He shoves his hands in his pockets. “No. Why? Do you?”

“You’ve been making moon-eyes at him,” says Frank. All the time. Hunnicutt will say something and Pierce looks at him like he’s a falling star. “It’s quite nauseating.”

Pierce sighs. His exhaled breath curls in front of him like smoke.

“BJ is my friend,” he says.

“But you’d like to be more.” Frank grabs his wrist, stops him. “Admit it.”

Pierce rolls his eyes. “It doesn’t matter what I want. He’s happily married.”

“ _I’m_ married.”

“But not happily?”

Suddenly, he’s very warm, sweating. What does Pierce know about his life? Of course he’s _happy_ , why wouldn’t he be—?

“Fellate an icicle,” Frank says, and stomps back inside.

Two hours later, Pierce comes up beside him as he’s looking at a chart. He’s very close, and very warm. He says: “You’re right.”

Frank giggles. “Can I find a tape recorder and you say that again?”

Pierce looks up at him. He’s angry. “I do like…and I’d want to…but I can’t risk it.”

That’s odd, because he’s the one who always risks everything.

“I think he may know, but I won’t ask,” Pierce continues. “It doesn’t matter. I would rather love him as my best friend.”

The way he says _love_ makes Frank angry.

All the patients are stable and so Frank tells a nurse to take over, and then indicates for Pierce to follow him. He sighs dramatically but he does, letting Frank lead him inside the linen closet.

“But you’re married, sir,” Pierce says, mocking, as Frank undoes his belt. “I don’t wanna be a home-wrecker.”

“Too late.” Frank shimmies Pierce’s pants down, and has a good laugh. Pierce has his bits tucked into a sock.

“My balls were freezing off,” Pierce says and then it makes sense — the old Army advice for cold weather Potter told them the other day. Always have three pairs of clean socks: one for your feet, one for your hands, one for your unmentionables.

He takes it off and puts it in Pierce’s pocket, and then starts working him up. Pierce leans into him, using him as his own personal heater. Dips his head down and kisses him thoroughly, with purpose. He neglects Frank’s need even though Frank keeps rubbing at against his hip. At least there’s some friction between layers of clothes. Frank doesn’t mind much when Pierce is clinging to him and thrusting into his fist and mumbling things like, _yes, like that._

After, Pierce cleans himself up with a clean towel that he throws to the ground, and then with some shuffling in the small space he gets on his knees and opens Frank’s pants, licks him from base to tip.

“Does your wife do this for you?” Pierce asks.

“Every other birthday.” Frank clutches Pierce’s shoulder as he slides that lovely mouth of his onto him. “But sometimes she’ll forget and say she did it the year before when she didn’t.”

Pierce makes a _tsk_ sound. “Maybe your marriage would be happier if she did.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Although, he thinks there’s more to it than blowjobs.

He knows something is wrong by the way Pierce looks at him. Frank’s letter is already open — that bespectacled creep always snoops — but he settles in to read a rare letter from his wife (unlike Hunnicutt, who gets several with every mail call). It’s only a few sentences long but he has to read it three times because there’s a sound in his head like a train derailing its tracks. He can’t get _divorced_ , that’s not for men like him—

He worries until he’s able to Louise on the phone. He tells her all the things she wants to hear, calls her _sugar_ and tells her that she’s the only one for him, that Major Houlihan is nothing but a war horse, that she can’t leave him because he’ll go crazy with grief and he’ll hurt himself. He’s almost convinced her and she asks—

“And what about Captain Pierce? Is he actually a man? You spoke of Houlihan as a man, until you were caught.”

Frank chuckles. “ _Pierce?_ He’s one hundred percent a man!” He knows; he’s seen all of him. “He’s m-my buckaroo. Good ol’ Hawk. I can go get him to talk to you if you want me to prove it—”

He’s able to calm her, convince her. As the line starts to go staticky he goes, “I’m still in your father’s will, right? Yes? Good. Alright, I love you—”

Phew.

But he has only a few seconds of relief before Margaret comes in and _oops_ she heard everything, especially the parts where he compared her to farm animals. He tries to explain, that he didn’t mean any of it, that he has to stay married for his well-being, but Margaret doesn’t want to hear any of it, says they are _finished._

He keeps one, loses the other.

He collapses onto Pierce’s cot and tells him the whole story.

“You really didn’t think it would last, do you?” Pierce asks. He’s sitting in his chair with his hometown paper folded in his lap, holding a martini. He offered one to Frank, but he declined. He feels ill enough without drinking what he imagines what tastes like paint thinner mixed with potpourri.

“I don’t know why it can’t.” Frank can’t live without either of them. It shouldn’t be this difficult.

For as difficult as his relationship with Pierce is, it’s quite easy. They bicker and fight, but then they get each other off. When the mood strikes, they’ll do something thoughtful, like last week when Frank saved a slice of apple pie for Pierce because he knows he likes it and it would’ve ran out before he was off duty, or when Pierce lets him use his phonograph to listen to his records. Pierce isn’t resentful over the fact that he’s married or because of what he has with Margaret, and he isn’t jealous about Pierce’s romps with nurses or his crush on Hunnicutt. They don’t expect the other to change — Frank doesn’t expect Pierce to become more patriotic, and Pierce isn’t holding out for Frank to be more sympathetic. What they have is convenient, nothing more.

Pierce nudges him with his foot. “You don’t really love her, do you?”

Frank sits up. “I love Margaret more than _anything_ , more than the horizon loves the sky, more than pen loves paper, more than—”

“I meant your wife.”

Oh.

“I can’t get a divorce,” he says. “I just can’t.”

“Why not? It’s the best way to end a marriage.”

“You don’t understand, being a confirmed bachelor,” Frank says. “Getting a divorce would be shameful because it means she doesn’t want me anymore. Louise is secure. All our friends were her friends first so they’d take her side, and then I’d get written out of her father’s will and then I’ll have to pay her half of everything I have while she shacks up with a younger man with more hair and more money.”

“…And because you love her.”

“Yes.” Of course. Just because he doesn’t feel the same about her as he feels about Margaret doesn’t mean anything. Just because he’s the happiest he’s been in years over here in the middle of a war doesn’t mean anything.

Pierce downs the rest of what’s in his glass, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Why don’t you just let her go?”

“Who?”

“Either. Both.” Pierce pours himself another serving and drops in an olive. “Just stop complaining about it.”

Frank isn’t complaining — it’s a legitimate problem he has and he doesn’t know what to _do_. Margaret will take him back, she always does, but he knows what she wants most is _marriage_. So, they are at an impasse.

Maybe he can move to one of those polygamist towns he’s read about.

“Methinks,” Frank says, “you’re just trying to get me away from women entirely.”

He expects to get a good chuckle from Pierce but he just shakes his head.

“No,” Pierce says. “I just think you’re pathetic.”

At least he knows what he’s getting with Pierce.

They get back together within the week. Margaret knows as well as Frank knows that they are meant to be. They don’t talk about what happens after the war. Why spoil what they have now? And who knows how long the war will go on...

Nothing has changed between them except one terrible thing: Margaret and Pierce are becoming friendly.

He wonders if it’s his fault, because he’s had less animosity for him as of late. She doesn’t seem to have a personal vendetta against Pierce anymore, and she can stand to be with him for more than half an hour without raising her voice at him. She requests to be paired with Pierce in surgery more often and half of Frank’s time is spent looking up to see what they’re doing. They work together well, like they know what the other needs without having to speak.

It makes him paranoid.

Frank is trying to pick out shrapnel around a kidney without accidentally severing anything but Pierce keeps rambling about playing hide and seek _au naturel_ and Frank does not have an ounce of focus.

“Stop that!” Frank doesn’t mean to yell but he’s had enough of Pierce’s stupid comments and he’s tired and thirsty and Margaret didn’t _want_ to be his nurse.

“Relax, Frank,” Margaret says, droll. Pierce turns to her and says something and she smiles — Frank sees it in her eyes. They’re talking about him, he just knows it.

That evening he has a horrific nightmare where Pierce and Margaret are operating on him. He’s laid out on this back on a cold table and not even covered with a sheet. He can’t move, can’t say anything. Together, they are tearing him apart — Frank feels Pierce’s hands reaching inside him, and Margaret gives him the tools to operate. There’s blood up to Pierce’s elbows and there’s no light in Margaret’s eyes, he’s hurting and they don’t care that he’s dying—

And then he’s ripped from the dream.

He hates that it’s Hunnicutt standing over him, with that puppy-dog look of concern.

“You were having a pretty bad nightmare,” says Hunnicutt. “You were...whimpering.”

Frank sits up and looks around the tent. It’s just them — right, Pierce has observation duty overnight. Which is just as well, because Frank doesn’t think he could face him after he had dreamed about him hacking at his viscera.

He rubs his face. His face is wet. He looks at his hands.

Hunnicutt kneels next to him. “There’s no shame in crying,” he says. “I’ve had the nightmares too, and I haven’t been here half as long as you.”

He keeps thinking of how Pierce looked at him, like he wasn’t even there. No emotion, not even hate.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Hunnicutt is too gentle and too kind, and Frank can see why Pierce adores him. It makes him dislike him all the more.

“I am not your _toddler_ to be mollycoddled.” Frank turns off his lamp, lies back down. “I don’t need your sympathy.”

Hunnicutt sighs. “Sorry to bother you, Frank.”

He listens to Hunnicutt go back to his bunk and quickly fall back to sleep. Every time Frank starts to doze he jerks awake, afraid the dream will pick up where it left off. It’s not until one or three hours later that he’s able to relax. Pierce passes by outside on his way to the latrine, sees that Frank is laying awake and he waves at him, waggling his fingers. Frank returns it and then finally sleeps, thankfully, dreamless.

Frank has a difficult case — it’s worse than thought once he opens him. So bad that he shouldn’t have even been brought to the table. He tries to fix him up anyway, but there’s uncontrollable hemorrhaging and shrapnel tore his insides to shreds, and there’s nothing Frank can do, he’s going to die — and he does, Frank feels the final pulse under his fingertips.

Pierce yells at him, like it’s _his_ fault a shell exploded two feet away from the kid. His face is covered with a mask so Frank is forced to look at his eyes and see how much he’s disappointed him, tells him, _you are the most careless son of a bitch I’ve known—_

Normally, after a good row in the O.R., it leads to them rubbing on each other but Pierce is properly mad this time. He knocks against Frank’s shoulder after they change out, doesn’t say anything to him good or bad because he knows Frank hates being ignored most of all.

“It was uncalled for,” Frank says to Margaret later. “I would have liked to see him do better.”

“Yes.” Margaret drinks more wine.

Frank looks over to where Pierce is sharing a seat with a nurse. His hands and mouth are all over her. He might as well bend her over the table and have her there for all to see in some flagrant display of possession.

“Disgusting.”

“I agree.” Margaret is silent for a moment and then says, “Do you want to go—”

“Yes.”

Frank thinks Pierce would tire of him, but he does not.

Pierce wakes Frank from his afternoon nap, frantic. “Hey, Frankie, let’s go, hurry.”

“Casualties?” Frank’s vision is still bleary as he puts his feet into his boots. He reaches for his jacket but Pierce stops him.

“No, but you need to come with me. As it were,” Pierce says, and then Frank sees the wild expression in Pierce’s eyes and ah, yes, he understands the urgency now.

“You woke me up for _that?_ Can’t you go find a nurse or possibly, participate solo?” But Frank lets Pierce help him get his arms into the sleeves of his bathrobe, and then starts nearly dragging him out the door.

Pierce is on edge, frazzled — he’s been more so lately. They all have, the ones who have been there a while. But Pierce has been acting out more, a sure-tell sign that he’s losing it.

And Pierce’s favorite thing to do when he’s stressed besides drinking and pranking people: sex.

Pierce leads him to the supply room, puts the coat hanger outside to ensure they won’t be interrupted. Pierce has planned for this — Frank stares at the dingy-looking mattress on the floor while Pierce locks them in and starts stripping. He flings his shirt to the side and steps out of his boots, which had already been untied.

“Come on!” Pierce hurries him, spurs him into action. Frank, who had less to take off, is quickly standing in front of him barefoot and half hard. Pierce gets down to his socks and pushes at Frank so he lays down on the mattress that’s seen better days and then Pierce climbs on top of him, straddling his hips and leaning forward to kiss him.

Pierce really likes kissing, necking, all of that. He’s pretty good at it, too. Better than the other stuff. He’s currently licking hot at the place at his neck that makes Frank’s toes curl and his breathing falter. He closes his eyes, enjoys the familiar weight of Pierce on him. But something’s wrong — normally by now, Pierce would be rutting against him like a dog in heat—

Frank slips his hand between them and finds that Pierce is having...trouble.

Pierce makes an interesting noise. “Give me a moment to catch up.” He sits up, spits in his hand and takes himself and tries. But nothing happens. Frank is impatient and feels a little embarrassed for him, so he takes over. He pushes back the foreskin and rubs there but Pierce makes a noise that’s more akin to pain than pleasure.

“Stop.” Pierce shoves his touch away, untangles himself from him. “I give up.”

Frank sits next to him. He puts his hands in his lap to hide his rigid potency. He could tease Pierce about it but it’s clearly bothering him.

“We can try later,” Frank says. “It just happens sometimes.”

“But it doesn’t happen to _me_.” Pierce runs his hand through his hair, pushing it back from where it fell on his forehead. “I haven’t been able to for two days.”

“Two whole days? Wow, that must be a record.”

“Shut up. I had a date with nurse Abel—”

“Oh, she’s a fox.”

“Right? So, we were getting steamy and I couldn’t perform, you know? That was yesterday, and then we hooked up again an hour ago and still...” He gestures to his crotch. “Will not cooperate.”

Frank blinks. “So, you dragged me out of bed to see I could fix your issue.”

“I thought maybe...” Pierce covers his face in his hands. His ears are red.

Frank’s personal _issue_ hasn’t waned. “Maybe if you helped me out first—”

“No.”

“Or you can pretend I’m a woman, if that—”

_“No.”_

He’s very frustrated and Frank sincerely wants him to feel better, erection or not. He leans in, kisses at his clavicle, says, “Tell me what you want.”

Pierce is silent, and then: “I want to go home.”

The mood is killed, dead.

Frank puts his clothes back on, wraps up in his robe. Pierce swears and puts his shorts on but flops back onto the mattress. Frank sits next to him.

“In my professional opinion—”

“Yes, _doctor?”_ Pierce says, cutting him off.

Frank starts again. “I think you aren’t able to...achieve...because you’re too stressed. You’re exhausted.”

Pierce _humphs_ but then turns to look at him. “Beej said the same thing.”

“Then I must be right.”

Pierce scowls at him. It’s hard to take him seriously in his underwear.

“I have an idea,” Frank says, and he pushes at Pierce so he lies on his front. He’s resistant, fights him.

“I told you, I don’t want to—”

Frank shoves him back down. “I’m not doing that.” He arranges himself next to him, puts his hands on Pierce’s shoulders, squeezes.

Pierce lets out a choked _oh_ that sounds nearly orgasmic. Frank laughs, pleased with himself.

“Margaret says I’m quite good at this,” he says. It often leads to something else, but he likes doing it for her. And for Pierce. “You’re tense.”

“Working sixteen hour days for...however long I’ve been here will do that,” Pierce says, his voice muffled. “And sleeping on a shitty cot.”

Frank massages his shoulders, drags his touch down his spine. He feels all the tension kept there. Pierce would carry the weight of the world if he could. Frank keeps on, finding those tense spots. He squeezes the nape of his neck, digs deep into his skin, so hard that it must cross into that territory of sweet pain. Pierce relaxes under him, going slack. Frank presses the heel of his hand at the place between Pierce’s shoulder blades. Pierce lets out a sound like, _guh_.

“Any stirrings down under?” Frank brings his hands down, rubs at Pierce’s hips.

“Still out of commission,” Pierce says, “but this feels great.” A moan escapes, cut off, like he hadn’t intended to do that. “Have you considered changing careers, Frank? You could be a masseuse. Happy endings optional.”

“I don’t want to put my hands all over just anybody.” Frank leans in, kisses the back of Pierce’s neck. “Only certain people.”

“How lucky I am,” Pierce mumbles.

“Yes,” Frank says. Lucky.

A couple days later Frank is in line for lunch and Pierce comes up behind him, presses his body against his and _ah,_ it seems that the captain has his groove back.

“Ten minutes in the same place,” Pierce whispers, breathing hot in his ear — and it’s really bold of him to be doing this, pushing his hardness on him like a whore. Anyone else watching would think it’s just Pierce messing with him, again — which he _is_ messing with him, but in another way. Frank often thinks of what others would say, if they knew. Of course, most would be disgusted because they’re both men, but it would be _thrilling_ to see their surprise that he, Frank Burns, makes the great Hawkeye Pierce absolutely stupid for his dick.

Frank shouldn’t be on call for Pierce’s needs and he should tell Pierce that he should get acquainted with his own hand, but...

Frank scarfs down the most edible part of his meal and then he surreptitiously walks across camp to the supply room. Once there he knocks, whispers, “It’s me.”

Pierce opens the door just enough to grab the lapels of Frank’s shirt and drags him inside the room. He’s already unclothed and he’s hard. Frank tries to kiss him but he shoves his face away and gets to work on his belt instead, says, “I need you in me now.”

Frank can’t get his clothes off fast enough — his underwear is still caught around his ankle when Pierce pushes him to the floor. There’s no mattress this time and the fall hurts but only momentarily because Pierce climbs into his lap with those marvelous thighs on either side of him. Pierce cants his hips forward, rubbing themselves together, and his eyes are wild and he bares his teeth. He looks almost vicious like this, wanting. Frank runs his hands down Pierce’s sides, over his ribs, clutches his ass. He touches him there and he’s already slick and open, he must’ve done it to himself while he was waiting—

Wordlessly, Pierce takes Frank in his hand and lowers himself on him, slow. Frank has to steady himself not to thrust up into that tight warmth — he grips at the flesh of Pierce’s hips and bites down on a moan. There could be more lubricant but it goes, Pierce taking him all the way. There’s a quiet moment where Pierce lets out a shaky exhale and then begins to move on him.

They’re _fucking_ , because there’s no other way to describe what they do (he has _intercourse_ with Louise, and he _makes love_ with Margaret). Pierce fucks him hard, unrelenting, right there on the dusty floor.

“Pierce.” It feels like his heart is going to give out or his brain short circuit. He doesn’t know which will go first. He’s going to die, here in the supply room. Casualty of war. “Hawkeye, please, oh fuck, don’t stop—”

Pierce laughs, a bit delirious. “You do have a filthy mouth, once the decorum is fucked out of you. I wish you’d tell me off like that in O.R., just once.”

“I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction.” Not that Frank hasn’t thought about it.

“I wouldn’t expect anything different.”

Pierce leans forward, braces himself with his hands on Frank’s shoulders. His dog tags hang in Frank’s face and he reads them: _Pierce, Benjamin F._

“Are you going to touch my dick or not?” Pierce asks. Frank does, and Pierce must have been so wound up from his days of inactivity that he comes fast in a mess between them. Pierce collapses on his chest, spent. Frank holds onto him, one hand at his back, the other at his leg, as he thrusts, finishing inside him.

Frank never thought he’d miss McIntyre.

Pierce and Hunnicutt are sickening with their displays of affection. At least with McIntyre it was just good fun with Pierce, whereas with Hunnicutt it feels more sincere, heartfelt. There’s no need for that, but Frank can’t even properly hate Hunnicutt because he’s too well-meaning and occasionally, kind.

Today: Hunnicutt is trimming Pierce’s hair and they’re flirting and Frank has to sit across the room and watch while they’re inappropriate together. Pierce keeps fussing that it tickles and Hunnicutt is fussing back at him and he’s touching Pierce’s face to hold him still because he won’t stop squirming. Pierce licks Hunnicutt’s hand, and to retaliate, Hunnicutt licks his own finger and sticks it in Pierce’s ear, which Pierce thinks is _hilarious_.

Gross.

Frank isn’t jealous. He doesn’t want Pierce fawning over him like that because he’s a man and that’s just silly. But maybe.

If he did.

He wouldn’t stop him.

Frank is left in charge and he’s doing everything he can to keep the unit running, but Pierce fights him at every step, questions everything he does just because it’s him who says it — he doesn’t question Potter this much, and when he questioned Blake’s decisions he was polite about it. If Pierce would just take an order and _trust_ him, they would be perfect together. Frank needs him on his side. They’re being shelled and there are too many wounded — he can’t make decisions on who gets a chance to live and who dies sooner, how can he be successful when Pierce expects him to fail?

The end up yelling at each other in O.R. He won’t let Pierce talk to him like that, it doesn’t matter that Pierce is a better doctor or because he has the loveliest eyelashes in the world. But Pierce threatens him and orders him away, and the last shred of consciousness he has is his face hurting and falling against Pierce.

Frank wakes up with a headache, on a stretcher in pre-OP.

It’s calm — no shouting, no explosions in the distance or near. He is alone, nobody in the room, patient or staff. He tries to thread together what happened: the O.R., Pierce yelling at him, pain.

He finds Pierce lying in his bunk in his clothes, asleep.

Frank shakes him awake. “Pierce!”

“Frank, I swear—”

“You hit me again!” Frank sits on his cot. “You struck a superior officer. I can court martial you for this.”

Pierce blinks awake then. “I didn’t and you know it.”

Maybe. It’s all kind of foggy. Pierce had been mad enough to hit him…

He crosses his arms. “You weren’t nice to me. I was in left in charge and you embarrassed me.”

“Cry me a river.” Pierce puts his arms behind his head. “You were making a mess of things. I had to intervene. It’s nothing personal.”

“It’s _all_ personal—”

Pierce shushes him. “I don’t want to fight. Come here.”

—and Pierce drags him down by his collar.

Fear prickles at Frank’s spine. “What are you doing?”

“Nobody can see us.”

He’s right — it’s just them, Hunnicutt is blessedly absent, and while it is broad daylight outside, all the shades are pulled down, giving them dark privacy.

“You really don’t want me court martialed, do you?” Pierce brushes his lips against Frank’s cheek, kisses next to his ear. “They’d take me away.”

“You deserve to be punished.” Frank tilts his head so Pierce can have better access to his neck. “You are very disobedient.”

“I can’t help it if I’m a bad boy.”

“Awful,” Frank says between kisses, “terrible,” and he is _terrible_ , coaxing Frank’s anger way with sweet talk and that clever mouth, and just like that, he’s forgotten why he was mad at him at all.

Pierce forgoes talking altogether when Frank relents and lies with him on the small cot. It’s much too small for two grown men, so Frank is half on top of him — Pierce hooks a leg over Frank’s, brings him closer. Pierce kisses him slow, lazy, and makes noises that sound unbidden: _ah, yeah, hmm._ Frank almost wishes Hunnicutt could see them now. He may not be fun and saccharine or golden-haired or California-cool like Hunnicutt but he’s the one Pierce has like this. Frank puts his hand to Pierce’s face, allowing himself the intimate moment. Pierce doesn’t shrink away like he expects him to do, but lets out a rough noise in his throat that Frank feels twinge behind his sternum.

Pierce is first to pull away from it. His eyes are heavy-lidded as he looks at him.

“I like your mouth like this.”

“I thought you said it was too thin,” says Frank.

“Not after you’ve been kissing,” Pierce says. “I know when you’ve been with Margaret, because you come back with your mouth like this.”

He runs his thumb over Frank’s bottom lip and Frank can’t look at him while he’s looking at him like that — like he actually _likes_ him — so he closes his eyes. But he’s defenseless as Pierce overtakes him, catching his lip between his teeth before kissing him again. Frank thinks of it more like a truce than losing.

It isn’t until they’ve bugged out and are ten miles away that Frank realizes he could possibly lose both of his lovers at once.

He reminds himself this is a war ( _police action_ ), and this is what happens. He tells himself that they’ll be okay — Margaret is regular Army, and Pierce is, well, himself. They will survive. They have each other.

And then a new worry blossoms: what if they turn to each other in comfort? Margaret and Pierce have been on better terms lately, and a moment of crisis could bring them even closer. What if they discover they like each other without him there, and—

He has to realign himself, focus on his task. Margaret would think he’s a coward to worry about her, and Pierce would just make fun of him. He does not allow himself to worry when there’s the sound of explosions in the direction where he left behind the only two people he cares about on this side of the world.

The unit moves back and Margaret and Pierce are safe. Frank knew they would be. If anyone would survive this war unscathed, it’d be them.

He gets out of the jeep and goes up to them and he itches to embrace them both at the same time, but he settles for a formal exchange of—

“Major Houlihan.”

“Major Burns.”

—with Margaret, and Pierce — Hawkeye — stands next to her grinning and Frank just knows that he’s about to say something annoying but Frank has that same relief, the _I don’t know what I would do if I lost you_ he feels for Margaret and—

—that’s when he knows he’s in trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> part 2: Margaret gets engaged! and then chaos.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Margaret gets engaged and Frank is heartbroken; at least there's still Pierce, but he forgets that he isn't supposed to tell her about that.

Margaret comes back from Tokyo engaged.

The worst part is that she expects Frank to be _happy_ for her. How can he be happy, when she’s supposed to be _his?_ The idea of Margaret marrying another man makes him sick. It’s the worst thing to happen to him since he came to Korea.

Pierce and Hunnicutt are nice to him, surprisingly. They listen as he mopes in their tent, lamenting his loss, and they supply him with plenty of gin to drink to give him liver damage.

“He sounds like a loser,” Frank says. “Penobscott.”

“ _Colonel_ Penobscott,” says Hunnicutt, correcting. “In case you weren’t aware of his rank.”

“He’s a colonel?” Pierce asks. “I must’ve missed that the first twenty times she mentioned it.”

“Big deal. He’s not even a full-bird colonel,” says Frank, except he can’t make it sound convincing because he wants a promotion maybe even more than he wants Margaret to be solely his.

“That’s the spirit.”

Frank goes on. “He’s not even a doctor. Who cares if he’s allegedly handsome? It’s more like Penob _snot_.”

Pierce and Hunnicutt laugh at his joke, genuinely, and Frank laughs, too. They’re laughing _with_ him instead of at him. For a moment he forgets why they’re getting along. He’s not so pathetic to not recognize it as anything more than pity but he doesn’t care.

…although, he hopes it’s more than pity with Pierce. After everything.

His mood plummets again.

Pierce is sitting next to him, his body a familiar and comforting presence. Frank _needs_ somebody. So. He slumps against Pierce’s shoulder, leans into his warmth. He thinks Pierce will be angry with him because they’re not supposed to touch in front of others, especially not with Hunnicutt. Pierce flinches, but...he doesn’t move away. Then, slowly, he shifts so Frank can lie more comfortably against him. It nearly makes Frank cry again. A little bit of kindness. Hunnicutt shouldn’t think anything untoward of it — Pierce is affectionate with everyone. But to Frank, it means. Maybe.

“What am I going to do?”

“You’re going to cry about it,” Pierce says, “but then you’re going to get over it and if you ever gave a damn about Margaret, you’ll support her decision.”

”Why should I? She’s a liar,” Frank mumbles against Pierce’s jacket. “She’s said she _loved_ me, but she got engaged to another man she just met.”

“Well,” Hunnicutt says, gently, “you weren’t really an option for engagement.”

Frank sniffs. “It’s not my fault I was married before I met her.”

Pierce sighs. Frank _feels_ his patience wearing thin.

“You knew what Margaret wanted,” Pierce says. “She asked you many, _many_ times for you to get a divorce so she could marry you instead. But you didn’t.”

“I couldn’t—”

“You _wouldn’t_. It’s just an excuse, Frank. I’m not saying she did the right thing, but I can’t blame her either. Imagine how she must’ve felt. You said you loved her, but you never made an effort to keep her.”

He doesn’t need to be told. He _knows_ he messed up.

Against Pierce and Hunnicutt’s advice, he goes to Margaret’s tent. He has the intention to make peace and tell her he’s happy for her but as soon as he breathes the same air as her he _can’t_ , he has to touch her and he has to kiss her — he tells her it’s better this way because now they can cheat _together_ , he presses himself against her, kisses her jaw the way she likes, but she shoves him away, clocks him in the face with her fist.

“I mean it, Frank! We are _finished_.”

She’s yelling at him. She hates him now. Maybe she always did.

“Fine.” Frank doesn’t need her anyway, and he tells her so, says: “At least I still have Hawkeye.”

—because it’s not like Pierce is going to suddenly decide he doesn’t like him anymore because he _already_ doesn’t like him.

“Hawkeye?”

Margaret is cute when she’s confused. She’s listening to him now—

“Yeah,” says Frank. “We’ve been together for months and you didn’t know.”

“ _Together?_ ” she asks, shrill, and he sees the moment when she realizes what he means and he had been so angry and so hurt he forgot it’s supposed to be a secret.

He takes her speechlessness as an opportunity to flee.

He puts on his combat uniform and slips out into the night.

His home is the woods, now. He knows there’s a dishonorable discharge waiting for him back at camp — Margaret will report him, surely — and Pierce is going to hate him even more for telling their secret. It’s best that he deserts. They don’t need a loser like him in the Army. He’s not the best at his job and he’s a coward and he has some apparent homosexual tendencies. They probably won’t even send out someone to look for him. It’s just like when he was a kid, playing hide and seek with his brother. Rob said he’d look for him but Frank hid under the crawl space for hours and his brother never found him, even when he shouted out his location; he tried to convince himself that he was hiding too well but at age six he knew when his company wasn’t wanted, so he laid there and cried instead and eventually his father found him (drug him out by his arm so hard he had the handprint of a bruise for two weeks and there was dirt under his nails because he was scrambling trying to not go because he knew he was going to get it).

There’s a rustle and his pulse picks up. He laughs at his first thought (his father has been dead for ten years), but then he remembers where he is. A group steps into the clearing — Korean, Chinese, whatever. It matters not. He points his rifle at them and takes them prisoner in the name of the U S of A.

They can’t discharge a hero. If they don’t like him, they have to at least respect him.

Although, there’s no fanfare upon his return. Potter gives him a verbal thrashing about being a damn fool and Frank expects other accusations but they doesn’t come. Pierce is there, too — not locked away in handcuffs — so Margaret must have not reported them, but with one look at Pierce he knows that _he_ knows she knows.

Pierce doesn’t look mad, but just plain disappointed. He wishes he were mad, at least he’s used to that.

They try to talk him down, say he’s headed for a section eight if he doesn’t stop. He isn’t crazy, they just aren’t _listening_ to him. They back away with their hands raised and he realizes he’s aiming his rifle at them. He wouldn’t hurt them, he’s more likely to hurt himself—

His mother calls. She always knows when he needs her.

“Nobody likes me here, you know, as usual...” Frank tells her. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I’m sorry.”

She sounds so very far away over the line.

He blinks as tears form in the corners of his eyes.

“Well, you see,” he begins, because he needs to tell someone who cares and she has to like him, unconditionally, “I had this friend...and the friend, um, well. Just pretended to like me. You know, the way dad used to.”

His mom is silent for a moment, then: “I’m sure somebody there likes you. You’ve written about—”

“Nobody.” He sniffles. “I hate it here.”

“I know, but think of all the good you’re doing.”

“I don’t know...”

“And you don’t deserve this friend,” his mother says. “You can find someone better.”

That’s what she always says.

“That’s right, mom,” he says. “What do I care? I can always find a new friend...”

He’s vaguely aware of the phone clattering to the floor and being carried out of the office.

When he wakes up it’s dark again. That happens, right? Night, day, night, day. Over and over.

He’s in his bunk, and when he shifts the blanket off, he finds that he’s wearing clean clothes.

“Good morning, sleepyhead.”

Frank looks to the side, sees Pierce sitting in his chair next to him. Immediately he’s filled with dread — he flinches, pulls the threadbare blanket up like it’s a shield, but Pierce just smiles softly at him. Like he cares. He’s a liar, too.

He turns, his back facing Pierce.

“Damn it, Frank,” Pierce says. “Be reasonable.”

“Go away.” He bites his tongue to keep from crying again. “You don’t care about me.”

“You’re right. I’m keeping vigil by your bedside because I have nothing better to do.”

Frank had decided he wasn’t going to talk — they have nothing to talk about — but Pierce has a way of dragging it from him.

“Everyone must think I’m an idiot.”

“We already thought so,” says Pierce. “Your most recent escapade didn’t change our opinion.”

“Well, good. I do like to be consistent.”

Pierce lays a hand on Frank’s shoulder. Frank pulls away, not in the mood for platitudes. Pierce isn’t deterred, he slides his touch to his neck, fingers spanning across his throat. If he pressed hard enough he could take his breath.

Frank swallows. “Pierce.”

“Frank…” Pierce runs his hand down his back, rests at his hip. “Don’t worry about… Margaret told me.”

He doesn’t have to say _what_ she told him.

“Aren’t you angry?” he asks. “I messed up everything. As usual.”

“Well, you can’t put the cat back in the bag. Or a man back into the closet.”

Frank is thinking he should have stayed in the woods.

“But,” Pierce says, “it isn’t the worst thing. It was fun for Margaret to be the scorned one. She called me a _hussy_ and said that I was a bad influence.”

“You are a bad influence,” says Frank. “I shouldn’t done this to her, oh, _Margaret_ —”

Frank groans into his pillow. His Margaret. She’s never going to take him back now, knowing his indiscretions. She doesn’t need him, because she has her _fiancé_. He bets she’s writing her report now to send to the higher-ups to get him discharged. To ruin his life, because she hates him—

As if Pierce could read his mind, he shushes him. “She promised she would keep it just between us. Said it’s not her place to get involved and, uh, she’s glad you have someone else.”

“You can’t replace Margaret.” For many reasons. Namely: she actually wanted him, at one time.

“I know,” says Pierce. “And I let her know that. I told her that just because you have someone else to get you off doesn’t mean she should have a clear conscience to ditch you like a box of unwanted puppies.”

Frank sits up. “Why are you being so nice to me?” It makes him uneasy, like something worse is coming. “You’ve been nothing but nice about this.”

Pierce doesn’t answer right away. He looks down, fiddles with a loose thread on his robe. He’s uncomfortable, Frank realizes. Put on the spot.

“She’s being insensitive,” Pierce says, finally. “You worship the ground she walks on but she’s treated you like garbage, and keeps kicking you while you’re down.” He shrugs. “I guess I feel bad for you.”

He’s being honest. Usually, there’s humor to soften the rough edges of it, but there is only truth. It’s almost too much.

“Since when do you care about my feelings?” asks Frank.

Pierce scoffs, laughs, harsh to Frank’s ears. “I am just tired of you crying about her. You’re leaving tearstains wherever you go.”

There’s the real Pierce, again.

“You can’t even admit that you might care for me.” Frank frowns. “You’re ashamed of me.”

There’s a flicker of…something in Pierce’s face. “Maybe. But you aren’t my worst conquest.”

That doesn’t make Frank feel better.

Pierce sighs. “I don’t mind that Margaret knows. She’s been with you too, so she can’t talk.”

“Right,” Frank says, and that reminds him that Margaret broke it off and suddenly, Korea is a lot more awful.

He wipes his face. He doesn’t think he’ll ever stop crying. Without her, it’s like a part of him is missing — and he didn’t realize how much that part made up of him until it was gone. It feels like he’s in mourning, but she’s still here. She’s just not his.

“Hey, stop crying.”

“Pierce, please don’t be cruel, I can’t bear it—”

“I’m not always a jackass,” Pierce says, “you just expect it,” and then wraps his arms around Frank, pulls him close.

Frank’s body goes tense. He’s very aware that it’s the first time Pierce has ever hugged him. It’s more intimate than anything else they’ve done together. Pierce doesn’t let him go, just holds him tighter, so Frank gives in and relaxes into it.

Pierce is warm. He smells like cheap shampoo and coffee and something else that’s very _Hawkeye_. Frank clings to him, presses his face into his shoulder. His robe is soft. Pierce cradles the back of his head, says, “This too shall pass.”

Frank disagrees, but he’s too sad to argue.

“I knew there was someone else,” Margaret says, “but I never imagined it was _you_.”

“Are you imagining it now? Of me and Frank getting busy in the sack?”

“Don’t be vile.”

The three of them are in Margaret’s tent, several days after the incident. They decided that have to talk about it, because it was getting awkward. Pierce agreed to discuss it as long as they weren’t sober.

Frank is fine. He hasn’t cried himself to sleep for two nights in a row. He can look at Margaret without his chest hurting too badly.

Drinking helps. He has more from the bottle of gin-disguised-as-wine that Pierce brought over.

Pierce and Margaret have done most of the talking. He sits as he watches them go at each other.

“How did it start?”

“On accident.” Pierce doesn’t elaborate, _we accidentally met in a men-only club in Seoul and then things got complicated._

Margaret isn’t satisfied with the answer. “Why?”

“Because we want to?” Pierce counters. “It’s not like we’re dating.”

Frank laughs. Both turn to him.

“So, it’s just sex?” Margaret asks him.

“Yes?”

“Is it because there was something I couldn’t give you?” She pauses. “Because I don’t have something you needed?”

Frank doesn’t know why she’s so upset. She’s the one who left him.

“It has nothing to do with you,” Frank says. “We just…it’s good together.”

So good.

“…do you even like women?”

“Of course!”

“ _And_ men?”

“I’m an equal opportunist,” says Pierce, like he’s proud of his deviance.

Margaret shakes her head at him, turns to Frank. “And you?”

Frank answers quietly.

“What did you say?”

“I said, I think Pierce is the only man I’m interested in,” and he goes to drink but Pierce takes the bottle from him and has a drink for himself, and then passes it to Margaret.

“Frank,” says Pierce, “to be as enthusiastic as you are when you blow me, you have to like men, somewhat.”

“I don’t like dick, I just like _yours—”_

He covers his mouth. He hadn’t meant to say that. Pierce is _thrilled_ and he’s never going to let Frank live this down, whereas Margaret looks like she’s going to punch him.

“I cannot believe you did _that_ while you were with me.”

“It’s no different than what you’ve done,” says Frank. “I never said anything about your private _meetings_ with every General who passes through here.”

“Frank!”

“I know you got on your knees for them in exchange for power—”

She slaps him. It’s loud, a _crack_ , against his cheek.

Pierce is uncharacteristically silent.

“I apologize,” says Frank. “I didn’t mean to imply… I know you’ve earned every merit you have.” He touches his face where it stings. “But I’ve been loyal to you, Margaret. You’ve been the only one I’ve been with here.”

“Except for Pierce.”

“He doesn’t count.”

Pierce gasps, mock aghast. “ _Excuse_ me?”

Frank ignores him, takes Margaret’s hand in his, kisses it. “Please,” he says, “we are meant to be together, I can’t live without you.”

“You’re going to have to try,” Margaret says, and then slides her hand from his. He feels the moment she lets him go.

He never knew how much of his time was spent with Margaret until it isn’t. He would work extra in post-OP just to be near her, he spent his evenings with her when they were available, and the rest of his waking time was spent thinking about her. But now his nights are long and boring, and his loneliness reminds him of her absence.

Pierce’s momentary niceness expired after the talk with Margaret — the next morning he put salt in Frank’s coffee and then said it was for the good of the unit, because Frank would save more lives if he couldn’t stay awake.

But they don’t stop their arrangement. Frank had worried that maybe…however, that very same morning he’s showering and Pierce kneels in his stall and puts his mouth on him.

Without Margaret, he also realizes he truly doesn’t have any friends in camp. He would say he spends more time with Pierce — in the clothed manner — but it’s only by circumstance, with them happening to be in the same space. He knows he annoys Pierce but he can’t complain because it’s his living quarters, too. Or maybe he doesn’t find him _that_ annoying, and he just doesn’t want to admit it.

Nevertheless, Frank does things like listen while Pierce reads a letter from his nephew aloud to O’Reilly. Frank pretends to be reading because Pierce didn’t include him in the conversation, but he enjoys the rambling of a teenager describing a television show about a woman named Lucy who gets into a lot of hijinks.

He’s caught when he laughs along with them. Pierce gives him a _look_ over his letter, like he is pleased to have enticed him. Frank buries his face in his book and doesn’t pay attention to Pierce for the rest of the afternoon.

He’s mostly reconciled what he feels about Pierce — that it really is _only_ him and it’s only because of some circumstance of the war — but one slow afternoon Frank is looking over Pierce’s shoulder as he looks at one of his nudist magazines. Just because he’s bored and he wondered what the fuss was all about.

It’s not what he expected. The images aren’t explicitly pornographic, but idyllic. Kind of awkward, in Frank’s opinion. Young, attractive people doing mundane things, like going on a picnic, playing beach volleyball, vacuuming. Pierce peruses them like he’s reading a newspaper, and not to arouse himself.

But Frank knows why Pierce enjoys them: they feature both women _and_ men. There are more women and they’re the focus but there are a few very naked men. He catches himself looking at them longer than he should.

Pierce notices. “See something that interests you? I can let you borrow this.”

“Just curious.” That’s all. He points to a picture of a man cooking at a stove. “That seems dangerous.”

“He puts on an apron, see?” Pierce turns the page. “Safety first.”

Frank shakes his head. “You’re depraved.”

“And loving every minute of it.”

They manage to grab some alone time in the VIP tent, and after, both are too lazy and too warm to move. Pierce is attempting to doze but Frank wants to talk, he needs someone to listen to him—

“I miss her.”

“I know,” Pierce mumbles. He doesn’t have to ask _who_.

“She can do that thing,” Frank says, “where she takes off her bra without taking off her shirt.”

“Sexy.”

“Yeah,” Frank says, remembering. “And she keeps wearing those shorts on purpose. She knows they drive me crazy.”

“Me too.”

Frank props himself up on his elbow. “I’ll tell you a secret.”

Pierce turns his head to look at him. “Hmm?”

“She isn’t naturally that blonde.” He suppresses a giggle. “Her true color is actually darker.”

The corner of Pierce’s mouth tugs into a smile. “No kidding.”

“Yeah, down below it’s—”

“Please, leave me some mystery with Hot Lips.”

Frank could tell him many things that he would probably like to hear — where she likes to be kissed and what she tastes like and how she holds on to him when he’s on top of her — but it’s probably best not to linger on it.

“I really do miss her.”

“I’m sorry.”

“She doesn’t even want to be my friend.”

“She tried,” says Pierce, “but you couldn’t handle it.”

Right.

Pierce doesn’t say anything if Frank cries a little bit, like he didn’t say anything if Frank accidentally called him _Margaret_ in a moment of pleasure.

Frank had thought that Pierce was a kind person, but the kindness just isn’t extended to him. However, as the war goes on he realizes Pierce isn’t good for the sake of goodness, but because he feels it is _right_.

Pierce is nice to the natives — he says that they didn’t ask for any of this. He cares _too_ much for the patients. He’s kind to children, too. He’s compassionate to the hurt and the sad. He hates anything to do with what he calls _injustice_ , someone being treated differently than another. He doesn’t care about rules and how things are supposed to be. He hates the war and hates the Army because to him, they are synonymous to death. He couldn’t care less who he offends as long as he gets what he wants.

Frank would find Pierce’s overabundance of morality very attractive if it didn’t occasionally conflict with his own.

(He can’t help it — it’s what he was taught to think. If he questioned it, everything would fall apart. He isn’t brave, like Pierce.)

Frank volunteers to go with Pierce to the nearby aid station to deliver supplies. Pierce doesn’t bother to hide his disappointment. He obviously wanted Hunnicutt to go with him, which makes Frank want to go all the more — he makes it an _order_ , so Pierce has to comply. To his surprise, Pierce listens.

Frank drives. Pierce gets out of his bad mood once they’re on the road. He needed the fresh air because he gets glum stuck at camp all the time. And away from everyone else, Pierce can drop some of the animosity towards him. Frank tells him if they make good time, they can take the scenic route back and park under a tree and…

Pierce relaxes, slumps in his seat, bends his leg and rests his foot on the dashboard. He shouldn’t do that but Frank says nothing.

“I see,” Pierce says. “You kidnapped me to ravish me in the woods.”

Frank feels himself turning pink and it has nothing to do with the sunshine.

“I thought I’d spare of us from Hunnicutt’s dramatic reading of his letter from home,” says Frank. “There’s only so much can one can hear about a toddler’s adventure at the park. _She tried to eat sand._ Thrilling.”

“I think it’s sweet.”

Of course. Pierce thinks everything about Hunnicutt is interesting.

“It’s annoying.” Frank grips the steering wheel so hard his knuckles are turning white. “He shares them without being asked.”

“It’s about caring for your loved ones. Telling someone else about them makes them more real. BJ listens to letters from my dad,” Pierce says. “I wouldn’t mind hearing one about your wife and kids.”

Frank purposely hits a bump in the road. Pierce swears as he’s jostled in his seat.

The reason why Frank never shares letters is simple enough: mail from home is few and far between, and the letters he does get are not as loving as Hunnicutt’s or Pierce’s. They read as factual: Had dinner with the Stevens. The leaves have started to change color. Enclosed is a picture from a birthday party. The price of milk has increased. Don’t work too hard.

“You don’t care about my life.”

“I don’t know anything about it,” Pierce says. “I’ve spent every day with you for nearly two years and I hardly know anything about your personal life. I can count on one hand the things I know about you. You’re a doctor, you’re unhappily married, you’re from Fort Wayne, you were a Boy Scout. I think you have a brother?”

“I don’t need to regale you with details of my life.” Frank turns a corner, scans the surroundings for enemies. “Besides. There isn’t much to tell.”

“Do you give a shit about your family?”

Frank takes his eyes off the road to leer at Pierce. “How dare you!”

Pierce smiles — pleased he finally got a rise out of him. “Well, do you?”

Frank scoffs and looks ahead again. “What a stupid question. They’re my family. Of course I care about them.”

“Of course,” Pierce says. “Your wife seems a bit frigid towards you. Do you sleep in separate beds?”

“No, if your smut-addled mind must know.” Frank doesn’t mention that he and Louise didn’t share the same bed until a few years into their marriage.

“Does she often let you inside her?”

“Pierce! You can’t ask me something like that, it’s _personal_.”

“I think I have the right, since you’ve been inside me.”

Frank thinks of driving into a tree. With his luck, both of them would survive.

“You’ve got kids, right?” asks Pierce.

“Three girls.”

“Alright, so you must’ve got inside her at least three times.”

“Hawkeye…” Frank forces himself not to look at him. If he did he’d be liable to say too much, like: _I don’t think she ever loved me._

Pierce pats Frank’s leg. Almost friendly. _Pat pat._ “Tell me about your daughters.”

“What about them?”

“Anything. You’ve never talked about them, except that you spawned them.”

“Um,” Frank starts. He isn’t really sure what to say. “Linda is our first born. She’s eleven — no, twelve now. She’s like her mother. She’s got my nose, though. They all do.”

“Unmistakably a Burns.”

“Yep. Then there’s Marie. She’s eight.”

“What does she like to do?”

“I don’t know. Coloring? Dolls? I didn’t have a lot of time for their silly activities.”

“You were busy, I assume.”

Other implications are in Pierce’s words. He doesn’t explore them.

“Louise talked about maybe enrolling her in dance classes, but that’s a waste of money,” Frank says. “It’s not like she’s going to grow up to be a ballerina.”

“You don’t know, she might.”

Frank shrugs. “And then we stopped trying, because Louise said she didn’t really care for a boy to carry on my name, anyway. But then Eleanor was an accident from the result of a New Years Eve party. She’s the only kid of ours that has blue eyes, like me. She was three when I left, so she’s almost five now and…”

He has to blink to clear his vision and he feels ill — he hasn’t really missed them since he’s been over here, he knew they were safe and that he’d see them again, but now he’s stricken with it, realizing he missed all that time with them when he was home, right there with them.

Pierce’s over-sensitivity must be wearing off on him.

He tries to talk but he’s choked up. He wipes his face with his sleeve, clears his throat. “I’m fine.”

“Frank,” Pierce says, “I—”

—and then they’re showered with dirt and it feels like his bones vibrate and then he hears the sound, a loud crash in his ear. He swerves and Pierce shouts and grabs his arm as they’re shelled again. He throws the jeep into park and jumps out and he’s aware of Pierce behind him — they duck down low, dive into the ditch on the side of the road. Another long whistling noise and everything smells like fresh burnt earth.

“Hawk!”

“I’m right here!”

He knows — Pierce’s weight against him is the only thing keeping him steady. He just wanted to hear his voice.

He realizes they’re clinging to each other.

“Hawkeye,” he says, yelling so loud it hurts his throat. “If I die—”

“You aren’t!”

“If I die,” he says again, “visit my girls. Tell them—”

Another shell lands nearby, drowns out what he was going to say.

“Ellie would like you, she likes silliness and nonsense—”

Pierce kisses him, there in the dirt, near the thirty-eighth parallel.

Desperate and sorrowful and scared. Pierce is trembling. It frightens Frank that he’s scared. So, he kisses him back because he doesn’t know what else to do. Their helmets clank together. There’s another explosion — closest yet — and Frank thinks, _not the worst way to die_ , and then—

Silence.

“Hawkeye,” Frank whispers, but Pierce won’t stop. “ _Pierce_. I think it’s over.”

Pierce breathes warm in his face. He pats his body down, then Frank’s, like he’s checking to see if they’re whole. He lets out a short laugh and flops onto his back, smiling so hard it could break his face. Frank takes that as a good sign.

Frank raises his head to look to the road. Their jeep is miraculously untouched.

“What’s the hurry, daddy-o?” Pierce asks and Frank has many replies but none are a good reason so he lies done next to him and looks up at the sky.

“I had a sister,” Pierce says, “but she died when we were both really young. I hardly remember her. I used to make up stories about her, because I missed something I never had.”

Frank would say growing up with a sibling isn’t all that great, but even he knows it has no tact.

“And then,” continues Pierce, “my mom died when I was ten.”

In that moment, Frank sees him: a lonely, sad boy with a funny nickname. He thinks if they met when they were kids, they probably would have been friends. Hawkeye and Ferret Face.

“Why are you telling me this?” Frank asks.

“I don’t know.”

For a while, Pierce has been consorting with women less. Frank would like to think it’s because Pierce would rather be with him, but he knows that isn’t the case. He figures Pierce has been through all the nurses, and the ones left are faithful to their marriage or aren’t into him. Pierce still tries — Frank watches Pierce extend invitations to an evening of fun ( _BOYB_ , _I’ll bring the booze and you bring your body_ ) but he gets turned down with a, _no thank you, doctor_.

It doesn’t seem to bother Pierce much. Not much bothers him these days (except for the stuff that does). He does other things to occupy himself: sleeping in the middle of the day, helping O’Reilly with the Colonel’s horse, following Hunnicutt wherever he goes.

Frank isn’t entirely convinced there isn’t anything beyond friendship with Pierce and Hunnicutt — they act like a couple, finish each other’s sentences, hardly see them apart—

The only thing that makes him doubt his doubt is that Pierce still comes to him for hook-ups. If Pierce were getting that from Hunnicutt, he wouldn’t be as sexually frustrated as he is.

Frank has sex with him more frequently than he did with Margaret. A week of each month isn’t blocked off and they don’t have to worry about their union making anything _accidental_ between them. They don’t often do…where he goes inside him — it’s messy, even when Pierce manages to scrounge up condoms, and they don’t always have the time — but he likes when they do, and he likes when they use their hands and mouths. He likes any of it. It’s all very good and it is a suitable distraction. He misses a lot of things he had with Margaret — camaraderie, snuggling, domesticity, being told _I love you_ — but he takes what’s available.

One summer evening they only use their hands because it’s too hot to do anything else. They sit facing each other, Pierce on his cot and Frank on an upturned crate, in the dark, with their hands through the slit of each other’s shorts. An easy position to jump apart if they were interrupted. It isn’t even really that good — the angle is awkward and it’s proficient, strictly for getting off as quickly as possible — but _oh_ , those bitten-down noises Pierce makes and those pouty lips and the slide of his dick in his hand.

After, they change their underwear and rinse off from the basin of water they filled earlier in the day. Even the water is warm.

Pierce is staring at the ceiling. He looks like he has more regret than usual.

“What?” asks Frank, even though he doesn’t care, doesn’t want to know.

“I was thinking…”

“Remarkable.” It’s nice to get a dig in on him when he can.

Pierce makes a face at him but goes on. “I was thinking how our— _this_ is the longest lasting thing I’ve since coming to this miserable place.”

“Sorry,” Franks says. It seems like something he should apologize for.

It’s around then that Frank starts thinking of him more as _Hawkeye_. He can count the number of times he’s called him by his given name: once. When they first met he said, “Benjamin or Ben? Or maybe Benji?” and Pierce grimaced, said, “Only Hawkeye.”

He doesn’t delude himself that Pierce likes him more than he had. Just because Pierce tells off a visiting Major who insults Frank’s stitching skills doesn’t mean he actually cares ( _I can say what I want, but nobody else can,_ said Pierce, _Frank Burns is_ our _sloppy surgeon_ ). Frank knows he’s a damn fool to get caught up in him, but all the things that used to annoy him about Pierce he starts to find endearing, like how he laughs with his full body and how he kicks his feet when he’s delighted and that he smells his food before he eats it and how he croons show tunes and lounges in his bathrobe and that he’s in desperate need of a haircut and—

Frank wishes they could have met outside of the war, but their paths would have never crossed otherwise.

Along with the other feelings for Pierce comes worry. He’s a bit more unhinged (than he already was), he’s more defiant and takes more risks. It’s like he has a death wish. Anything to get away from the war.

He takes it out on Frank. For a self-proclaimed pacifist, Pierce is rather vicious towards him. The anger makes him amorous — which Frank doesn’t mind, but he wishes Pierce would be reasonable about it and not randomly accost him while he’s doing inventory in the supply room. Half attacking him, half seducing him, like he can’t make up his mind what he wants to do. Frank should be angry and do something about his worry, but he’s mad too and he wants to fight and really, he can’t resist when Pierce presents himself like a feast—

Pierce sits bare-assed on a table with his pants and underwear pulled to his ankles and his dick out. He wants unashamedly, telling Frank exactly what to do— _keep your mouth around the end, use your hand, not like that, you know how, stop fucking around, oh shit yes good, don’t stop ah—_ and Frank does because he’s good at following instructions.

(That’s why he likes the Army: they tell you what to wear what to eat what to say what to think and you earn _points_.)

“Not enough,” says Pierce. “Everything, too loud. Can’t think.”

Frank backs off, but keeps his hand working on him. “What do you need?” he asks. He’s sitting in a rolling chair in front of Pierce, positioned between his legs. Pierce looks a wreck already — he’s sweating through his shirt at the collar and under his arms, his hair sticking up where he’s run his own hands through it, his eyes dark and wild.

Instead of an answer, Pierce kicks him in the side and he’s still wearing his boots so it hurts but Frank gets the message. He licks him wet and strokes him quick and there are few greater delights than having Pierce undone by his touch. He’s close to release, Frank’s been with him enough to know the signs. He stops talking and he reaches out to touch him — this time he clutches at his arm — and there are the physiological signs too, like his balls going tight and his breathing irregular and leaking wet. Frank edges him closer, almost _almost_ there and then—

—he stops.

Pierce looks down at him, confused, betrayed. “Frank.”

“What’s wrong?” He can’t help but smile, seeing Pierce incapacitated because he needs something only he can give him.

“Why’d you stop?”

Frank runs just hands down Pierce’s slim thighs, dips his head to kiss his knee. “You can wait.”

It’ll be difficult for him. Pierce doesn’t like waiting. It’s difficult for Frank, too — he’s uncomfortably hard in his pants and he’s one indecision from taking himself out and bringing himself off. But this with Pierce, prolonging him, it’s another type of satisfaction.

Pierce goes to touch himself but Frank stops him, pinning his hands on the surface of the table.

Pierce glares at him. “Evil bastard.”

Frank clicks his tongue. “That’s not very nice.”

“Prick. Jackass.”

Frank gives the slightest brush of his hand on Pierce where he’s aching, smiling as he swears and nearly lifts off the table.

“Selfish moron, cocksucker, ferret face—”

Frank slips his hand under Pierce’s shirt, teases the cute trail of hair leading from his belly button down to his groin. Touches him everywhere except where he wants it. Pierce bucks his hips forward but he meets nothing and a rough sound rips from his chest, if anyone were awake right now they’d hear him—

Frank covers Pierce’s mouth and good, Pierce doesn’t go to touch himself, he waits.

“You need to learn that you don’t get everything you want,” says Frank. “You don’t understand.”

Pierce holds his gaze steady as he licks between Frank’s fingers and takes one into his mouth, sucks on it like he would his dick. Frank’s breath catches in this throat — nobody should be allowed to be like that. He yanks his finger free fast and Pierce gags from the suddenness of it. Frank puts his hand to Pierce’s face, forces him to look down at him.

“Please,” Pierce asks, quiet. He swallows, licks his lips. There’s wet at the corner of his eyes. “ _Please_ , Frank.”

Frank thinks he’d let him do anything to him.

He comes as soon as he’s touched — chest heaving and his body folding in on itself. He’s crying, and Frank feels a little bad about denying him, but then he says _thank you_ and he seems a bit more lucid than he has in days.

Frank brings himself off while Pierce watches, silent.

But the anxiety still clings to Pierce. He has terrible nightmares — several nights in a row Frank wakes up to Pierce screaming bloody murder and thrashing in his bunk. Frank lets Hunnicutt attend to him since Pierce prefers him, and because Frank wouldn’t know how to comfort him, anyway. If they were in a combat unit, Pierce would be immediately discharged — they couldn’t have someone giving away their location, or sleepwalking into an enemy foxhole.

Frank takes the ammunition out of his gun and hides it away. Just in case.

Pierce, very childishly, decides he doesn’t need to sleep. He wakes Frank up to talk to him, only because Hunnicutt isn’t there, of course. Frank is about to tell him he’s too tired to fool around — he’s tired, he hasn’t been sleeping well _either_ — but then Pierce starts telling him about his hometown, and other things that Frank can’t make sense of.

“Have you ever been afraid of the dark?” Pierce asks. “Even when you were a little kid?”

Yes. In the dark he couldn’t see, and he couldn’t prove there weren’t monsters lurking about. Rob used to make fun of him — one time he sneaked into Frank’s room and grabbed his foot and Frank cried so hard he made himself sick. His mom got him a nightlight but it was short lived, taken away by his father with the threat _I’ll give you something to really be afraid of._

“He took away your nightlight?” asks Pierce, bewildered, like he can’t imagine a father being cruel because his is so perfect.

“Yes,” says Frank. “It was for the best, really. There’s nothing in the dark that’s not there in the light.”

He turns away from Pierce. If he stops talking back, maybe he’ll leave him alone.

“How can you sleep?” Pierce asks. “With everything?”

“I have to.”

Pierce gets better, or better at hiding it.

Margaret talks to him a lot — Frank doesn’t understand why she can be friends with Pierce and not _him_.

He supposes he’s jealous. He just doesn’t know whom he’s more jealous of.

Margaret invites them into her tent for a late night chat that turns into bickering —Pierce and Margaret are buzzed from wine, and Frank is just mad. Margaret won’t stop talking about _Donald_ and Pierce won’t stop making snide remarks at him and he fires back, which amuses Margaret.

“Oh,” she says, leaning back in her chair. “So, that’s how it goes with you two.”

“I win the arguments,” Pierce says. “As I’m sure you know, Frank gets dumber when he’s excited.”

“I’m well aware.”

They laugh.

Frank huffs. “Well, my penis is bigger than his.”

Margaret chokes on her drink and Pierce claps her on the back. She looks very pointedly at neither of them.

“So?” asks Pierce, nonchalant, “What matters is what you can do with it,” but he blushes gloriously pink, nonetheless.

“I like you both when you aren’t together,” Pierce tells him.

Frank doesn’t know if he likes himself better.

“I want to sleep with you.”

Even though they have been together plenty of times, it still makes Frank flustered that Pierce would _want_ to.

Frank clears his throat, continues washing his arms.

“You’re in the mood for that?” Frank is never one to say no, but he’s liable to fall asleep in the middle of it and Pierce looks the same. They just finished a double-and-a-half shift of surgery and he’s so tired he isn’t sure his body could summon energy to send blood downward.

“No I just…sleep. I want to sleep.” Pierce rubs his forehead. “I just want to cuddle up with someone warm and sleep — shut your _face_.”

“Cuddle?” Frank asks. It’s more explicit than when Pierce told him _bend me over and pound my ass._

“Yes.” Pierce yawns. “I just want to be warm, horizontal, unconscious for a few hours.”

“That might be difficult,” Frank says. “Since our quarters are not available.”

Pierce makes a frustrated noise and slumps against Frank’s back. They had had so many wounded, overflow of the overflow in the mess tent were moved into the Swamp. They do need to sleep, and now Frank is really eager to _cuddle_ with one very sleepy surgeon—

“Margaret is on duty the rest of the night,” says Frank. “Her tent will be empty.”

Pierce perks up at that. “Frank, you do have moments of brilliance.”

“Oh, shucks.”

Margaret’s tent is unoccupied as he’d hoped. Pierce throws the decorative pillows on her bunk on the floor and the covers aside.

“You first,” he says. “I’m little spoon.”

Frank has no argument. He climbs in and Pierce joins him, putting his back to Frank’s front, and then tucks the blanket around them.

He already feels his eyes getting heavier.

They’ve never laid together like this. It’s always been getting off and then going their own way. Resting together is intimate, a deeper connection than sex, which is why Frank is so confused why Pierce asked him.

But Pierce had requested cuddling, so — Frank wraps his arm around Pierce’s middle, tucks his face against Pierce’s neck. Pierce tenses for a moment, but then relaxes against him, and maybe Frank is half dreaming already but he thinks Pierce presses closer into him.

“G’night, Hawk,” he mumbles, and Pierce replies something slurred, sleeping.

And they lie together like that until hours later when Margaret is off duty and wakes them by shouting at them, _I don’t care what you do together because I am an engaged woman, but don’t do it in my bed—!_

Pierce overworks himself, because he has a hero complex. Frank had checked himself out of the O.R. hours earlier to rest, because it’s unreasonable to work more than thirty hours with more than catnaps on a stretcher in a hallway. Pierce usually strolls into their tent when all the wounded are seen to or he’s ordered away…

Frank wonders which it is this time when Pierce wakes him up in the dead of the night. He supposes the latter because he’s without Hunnicutt and he has that look on his face when he’s seen too much.

“Pierce, you okay?” Frank sits up. “Hawkeye?”

Pierce wordlessly lowers the flaps in their tent. It’ll be daylight in a few hours and it will be nice to not be disturbed by sunshine, and there’s no breeze anyway to speak of—

And then Pierce starts stripping off his clothes — scrubs, he was still wearing bloodied scrubs — and leaves them in a pile on the floor. He’s always so sloppy.

Frank moves before he can ask it of him.

Pierce lies under him as they quietly move under the blanket. Pierce doesn’t do much other than lie there. He hadn’t bothered to shower and so he smells very sweaty and he hasn’t shaved in days and it’s scratchy when Frank kisses him. His eyes are closed. Frank thinks at one point he falls asleep but then he mumbles something under his breath and rests his hand on Frank’s hip. Frank shifts, changes how he’s inside — Pierce arches up to meet him and goes _uh_ with every thrust and he’s looking at him now, his eyes dark with want.

“Hawkeye,” Frank says, hushed — he lays flat against him so there’s friction between them and then Pierce comes unceremoniously, open-mouthed with a silent moan. Frank kisses him, shuddering as his orgasm follows.

Frank’s pulse slows. He has his arm around Pierce so he won’t fall off the bunk. “You have to move,” he says, mumbled against Pierce’s ear. “You can’t sleep in my bed.”

Pierce is either already asleep, or ignores him.

Frank puts on his shorts and shirt and goes to lay in Pierce’s bunk instead. It’s the same thin bedding, but it feels more comfortable than his own, somehow. He wraps up in the blanket that smells like Pierce, and sleeps.

He knew Margaret was going to be married — it’s all she’s talked about — but it doesn’t seem real until Penobscott shows up (he is as good-looking as Margaret has said) and announces the wedding will be at the 4077th in a few days.

And then Frank is asked to be the best man. It has to be a joke.

It’s not. None of it is.

“I’m fine,” Frank tells Pierce.

Pierce looks at him. “I didn’t ask.”

“Well. I’m fine.”

He is. He has to be.

“This is the last shift I can make a pass at you, since you’ll be a married woman after tomorrow.”

“I doubt that will stop you.”

Frank listens outside the lab — the door is open ajar, and he overhears a conversation between Margaret and Pierce. He shouldn’t eavesdrop, but.

“Do you think he’ll be okay?” There is some concern there in Margaret’s voice.

“Frank? Yeah, he’ll be fine.”

The pair goes quiet and there’s the scratch of pen on paper. Frank thinks the topic is done with, but the rise and fall of the conversation picks up again.

“You know,” says Margaret, “he wasn’t so bad.”

A pause, then, “I suppose.”

“I’m surprised you’re still…with him.”

“I’m not _with_ him, it’s just—”

“I know.”

Frank knows, too.

“He’s alright,” Pierce says, “when he’s not operating, or talking…”

“Oh, stop. He’s funny sometimes and you know it.”

Pierce lets out an indignant scoff. Frank wishes he could see Pierce’s face right then — he must have that strained expression when he’s trying not to laugh, because he _does_ think he’s funny but never wants to admit it—

“He’s not bad under the sheets, either.”

“ _Major_.”

“I’m not wrong. I mean, he can be a bit much and often selfish, but he earns top marks in enthusiasm.”

“...yes. Sometimes I feel like I’m getting humped like I’m in heat.”

Suppressed laughter.

“But he’s easy to please. You know that place at his neck?”

“Gets him mewling like a kitten.”

Frank feels warm. How can they be gossiping about him? It’s _rude_.

“I know it’s different with you, because of your…equipment,” Margaret says, “but does he do that thing where he…?”

She must make an unseen motion because Pierce breaks out into laughter a few seconds later.

“Yes! And he—?”

“ _Yes._ That was nice.” She pauses. “And you know, he’s…”

“…hung?”

Frank blushes so much he’s sweating.

“I never said anything because I didn’t want him to get...”

“Cocky?”

Laughter. He’s never heard either of them laugh like that before.

He’s about to leave them be, on the high note that they agree on liking one _part_ of him, but Margaret’s tone changes—

“Don’t hurt him.”

“I’m not. I won’t,” Pierce says. “But it’s not like he expects anything from me.”

“Are you sure? He gets rather attached.”

“You make him sound like a barnacle.”

“It’s true, if you’re with him, he—”

“What’s with this _with_ talk, Margaret? I’ve told you I’m not _with_ Frank, we’re just, uh. Sometimes together.”

“Oh, I see the difference. Thank you for clearing that up.”

“You’re welcome.” Silence. “I would never tell him, but—”

Frank never hears what Pierce would never tell him. O’Reilly comes around the corner and he has to walk away in a hurry because he doesn’t want to be asked why he was looming outside the door.

Frank doesn’t know how much he loves Margaret until he stands next to her as she marries another man.

He knows it because if she’s happy he is too, even if it’s not with him. She’s the most beautiful and brilliant woman he’s ever known — will _ever_ know — and she isn’t his.

It’s asked if anyone objects to the marriage and everyone turns to look at him. He supposes he could say something, but. She’s made her choice.

He meets eyes with Pierce. He is very handsome in his Class As. He smiles at Frank, sympathetic.

And then there’s the sound of approaching helicopters and he doesn’t have much time to think of Margaret, or anything else.

After the wedding, after hours of surgery, Margaret leaves in a chopper with her new husband and Frank is left standing in the place where she told him _goodbye_ long after the dust settles.

He thinks of a lot of things, like: would she have married him if he had asked? Would they have been happy? They had been fighting a lot, near the end. Was it because she felt like he didn’t care? Was it because he felt her slipping away? What could he have done differently? Or does it not matter, because she realized she didn’t like _him?_ Everyone eventually figures out he’s unlovable, but he thought she loved him enough that she’d never run out of it…

Some time later — he isn’t sure how long — Pierce comes and takes him back to the Swamp. He and Hunnicutt had a head start on getting plastered, but Frank doesn’t really feel like drinking. He wants to be able to think. He doesn’t want to forget.

“No thanks,” he says when Pierce offers a glass of his homemade swill.

Pierce shrugs and gives it to Hunnicutt instead. Hunnicutt’s hand covers Pierce’s as Pierce passes it to him. They touch longer than necessary — Hunnicutt rubs Pierce’s knuckles and they look only at each other.

“Thanks,” says Hunnicutt, and he drinks.

“Any time,” replies Pierce. He’s still looking at Hunnicutt.

Frank feels like he’s intruding on something.

“Actually, I think I will have one.”

“What does Hunnicutt have that I don’t?”

They’re making use of Margaret’s empty quarters — she won’t be back for a while yet — and Pierce is currently working on making a bruise at Frank’s neck. He had stopped at the question but he continues, kissing, gentle bites.

“Compassion,” Pierce says. “A sense of humor. A chin. Steady hands in the O.R.”

Things that Frank can’t do anything about.

“Do you ever want to marry?”

Pierce looks up at him, rests his arm on Frank’s chest. “What’s that got to do with BJ?”

“Nothing. I was just asking because I was thinking about…”

Pierce understands. He makes a thoughtful sound. “I would get married if I was supposed to.”

“Like, what? If you got her pregnant? Or…?”

“If only it were meant to be.”

Frank wishes Pierce could give a proper answer for once in his life.

“Have you ever been in love?”

“All the time.”

“Hawkeye—”

“Yes,” says Pierce. “Once. But…” He fades for a moment, comes back. “It wasn’t right.”

Frank wants to ask more, but Pierce looks itchy from sharing so much already, so.

“Are you alright?” Pierce asks. “It’s fine if you’re upset about Margaret. I’ll—” he sighs “—listen.”

Frank shakes his head. “There’s nothing to be said. I’m just glad there’s still us.”

“ _Us_ ,” Pierce says, echoing. He sits up, making distance between them. “How long do you think this is going to last, Frank?”

“I don’t know.” In the beginning, Frank thought each time would be the final time but now it’s a constant.

“Because it’s not going to go on after the war or anything. It may not go beyond Tuesday,” says Pierce. “This isn’t serious. We don’t even like each other.”

“Right. Of course.” Frank laughs. He wonders if it sounds as forced as it feels.

They have sex instead of talking about it more. It gets heavy, them rubbing on each other and touching and Frank is so desperate to feel anything at all that he says, “You can be the one to do it. You know.”

Pierce looks at him. “Are you sure?”

Frank nods and then lets Pierce reach between his legs. It’s uncomfortable at first but Pierce talks him through it until he relaxes and it feels good. When he’s ready, he finds that Margaret keeps condoms in the same place and then—

It’s not exactly what he thought it’d feel like, but it’s enjoyable. Pierce moves slow, languid on top of him, reaches between them and touches him — he’s making an effort for it to be good for him. It would be kind, if Pierce had a reason to be kind to him. Pierce keeps kissing him, like he’s trying to coax a reaction from him. It works, Frank moans and whimpers and then says, “Sorry.”

“What for?” There’s a crease in Pierce’s brow.

Frank kisses him there.

“Nothing.” He won’t let himself think of why.

Reality doesn’t set in until a few days later when he’s on R&R.

He thinks he sees Margaret in passing, which is possible because she’s in Tokyo too (for her honeymoon…she was married, not to him), but it’s not her. Just a flash of blonde.

He searches for her — he needs her. She loved him once and maybe she can again. If she isn’t capable of it, she can just let him stay with her and he can pretend that she loves him. That’s what he did when he was a kid, pretend that his father loved him. He can live with Margaret and her husband — Frank will lay with him too, if he wants it.

He follows every blonde woman he sees on the street but none are his Margaret. He thinks of finding a tall, prematurely graying man and fucking him senseless but doesn’t want that, either. He just wants—

And then he sees her — his heart leaps and he finally feels peace — he needs to talk to her, she’ll understand—

He follows Margaret and her newlywed into the bathhouse. He doesn’t realize it’s _not_ her until MPs drag him out the door.

Somehow, Frank talks himself out of the court martial and a section eight. Groveling to superiors works wonders.

“You’re getting discharged,” he’s told. “Battle fatigue.”

The sergeant taking notes has a good laugh. “Battle fatigue? Aren’t you a doctor from a MASH?”

“We’re only three miles away from the line,” Frank says. “We get bombed all the time.”

But they aren’t listening to him, it doesn’t matter if he says, _I’ve seen the war, it was brought to us._

He finally understands a little why Pierce hates the Army so much. They don’t care. Nobody cares, not his family (his mother never _stopped_ his father from hitting him), Margaret, Pierce — no matter how much he tries, he can never do the right thing, he can never make them _care_ —

And then he’s sent home with only what he has in his possession.

He presses his face to the window as the plane lands, like a small child. Fort Wayne looks exactly as it did when he left over two years ago. If he hadn’t been to the other side of the world and back, he wouldn’t believe there is a war. It doesn’t feel right — how can a place be unchanged when everything else has?

He had his Class As in his bag when he was arrested in Tokyo so he’s wearing those. People salute him and that’s a rush but then it feels empty.

He’s taken directly to the VA hospital, for observation for his fatigue. He knows enough to know it really means: _crazy_. They make him take a scalding hot shower and give him clean clothes (underwear, linen trousers, t-shirt, socks, slippers, robe), make him take medicine (he doesn’t ask what), and put a medical ID bracelet on him (Maj. Burns, Frank M.). He’s put in a room all to himself. His room is bare but he has an actual bed, it’s indoors, and there’s sweet, sweet air conditioning. He is very alone.

He finds himself missing the Swamp, dirty floor and clutter and all. He misses _Korea_.

Maybe he is crazy.

He had thought Louise would be there waiting when he came home — he knows the Army must’ve contacted her. He goes to the public telephone in the hall and calls for his home. She answers on the fourth ring.

“Why aren’t you here?” He tries not to whine. “Don’t you want to see me, sugar?”

She gives some excuse about being busy and the VA is so far and why is he in the hospital, anyway?

He cups his hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone, lowers his voice. “I’m a bit tired from the war, you know? They’re just checking me over. But I know I’d feel much better if I saw you, I miss you… That’s alright, I understand.”

She all but hangs up on him after a brief _you too!_ when he tells her he loves her.

Then he asks the operator to put a call into Korea, MASH 4077.

—because he can’t stop thinking about how upset Pierce was when McIntyre left without saying goodbye and Frank couldn’t tell him goodbye and now Pierce is probably hating him, too—

After a couple minutes he’s connected. It actually exists, he was there — the last years weren’t all a fever dream. He talks to Hunnicutt first. Frank asks if they sent all his belongings and even though it’s Hunnicutt, it’s nice to hear a familiar voice.

In the background he hears Pierce — no, he’s away from the war so he’s just _Hawkeye_ — and the phone gets passed to him.

“Yes, Frank?”

“I’m home,” says Frank. “I’m at a VA hospital in Indiana.” He pauses. “I’m working here.”

A small lie won’t hurt.

“You what?”

“I was cleared of all charges,” says Frank, and then there’s another, bigger, lie, “and I was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel.” He giggles. “Don’t you think that’s just neato mosquito? Tell BJ!”

Hawkeye is quiet for a long moment and Frank would think they got disconnected if he didn’t hear him breathing. “Uh, Frank, we both think that’s wonderful.”

Frank rests his forehead against the wall.

“I’ve never met anyone else like you, Hawkeye. I...” His voice cracks. “I need to know, did you ever like me at all?”

Because Frank liked him, his rambling nonsense and his deep-set eyes and his passion—

“Yeah, Frank. We’re proud to have known you.”

Frank imagines Hawkeye now — leaning against O’Reilly’s desk, one hand against his forehead. He sounds bothered. Why?

“Hawkeye, did you—?”

“Best of luck in your future, Frank.”

There are so many things Frank wishes he could say, but he figures Hawkeye cares about none of them, so.

“Try not to die, Hawk."

_Don't let the war kill you._

He hears the intake of breath — he hears when he’s _got_ to him, and he hears when he pushes it aside, and then—

“Bye, Frank.”

And the line goes dead.

Again, he doesn’t know what he had, until he doesn’t have it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- I gave myself hand cramps writing this because maybe you aren't supposed to type ten thousand words on your phone in three days.  
> \- I started this mostly as a passive thing but sorry, now I am 100% onto this, here we go. I am here to give Frank the character development there could have been, maybe, whatever I'm doing it anyway.  
> \- I had to go back and listen to the actual phone conversations in the episodes, so yes, those are mostly lifted directly from the script. As some of the lines from Hawk's nightmare episode. And other various things; like, I think Frank mentions one (1) time that he has three daughters.  
> -I was going to make the Hawkeye/BJ more explicit but the one-sided pining flirting was more delicious, I think.  
> \- I had to cut out a part where Frank was 👀 at Flagg because you rewatch that and tell me he didn't have a crush on him.  
> \- there's going to be a part iii to this series so...yeah, whatever.  
> \- if you want to talk to me about MASH, I'm at tumblr @acanofpeaches

**Author's Note:**

> \- many thanks to bluecarrot for listening to me ad nauseam about this, and for them ~~giving me ideas~~ letting me steal ideas to make this better  
> \- I still don't know why the idea of these to together has overtaken me but YEAH here I am, no regrets. thanks.


End file.
